10 Mar Blowing bubbles for the very first time

Sweet simplicity – blowing soap bubbles. Think back to childhood. What are the first things to pop up in your mind? It is the great time of “first-times” – first step, first snowfall, first strawberry. It was something special, wasn’t it? Something you created out of nowhere – a wand and your breath – et voila! Despite easiness to create, it looks like something you have never seen before – all colors of the rainbow and all possible shapes changing every millisecond. It’s all in front of your eyes!

The photo here, made by LIFE’s Gjon Mili, of a young girl playing with soap bubbles for the first time distill so many aspects of childhood: the wonder, the innocence, the simplicity.

When LIFE shared these photographs with its readers in 1941, the magazine wrote:

All the excitement of a great childhood occasion is captured in these pictures of little Celestine Jay Ku blowing her first soap bubbles. . . . Celestine took to bubble-blowing quickly and enthusiastically. She bounced with glee when Mili blew on the bubble-pipe to show her how to do it.

It’s not only the mere nostalgia about childhood, but Mili’s pictures makes us think that despite all modern devices available out there, it’s these small little things that leave us mesmerized no matter if you were born in 1920s or 2000s.